Well, you see, there's the thing, mitz: On a Mac, you actually can boot and run your OS off an external FireWire drive. Cool, eh?

You can even boot off USB drives now. Not sure when they added this feature. Just hold down the option key to see boot drives when your machine boots up. This is what Apple Store techs use. I find this to be a much simpler solution to resolve issues than having a 6-pin x 6-pin FW cable and another Mac to use Target Disc Mode.

I made a small partition on my USB2.0 Time Machine drive with Leopard on it in case I need to get into my Mac from a HDD or local OS X issue.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

There was no lie involved. I miss spoke and admitted it right after I realized I did. But seriously the only thing you can hit me over the head with is throughput on external cords? Seriously? I'm an idiot for that? Looks like I got under someones skin with the other stuff I was saying....back up your claims that it's not a mobile processor or that you see real difference with ddr2 1066 vs ddr3 1066. Or howabout the throttling issue. When I make a mistake I admit to it buddy. I've also defended everything I've said with facts. I'll tell you what though....I fell into the trap of trying to build a mac piece by piece(which I did) for less than what you can buy it for. I can certainly build a computer with no limits put on me that would bury a mac for a grand less.

You keep comming up with stuff to try to pen me in. Yeah you got me on 1 thing, "F"ing cords.

You can even boot off USB drives now. Not sure when they added this feature. Just hold down the option key to see boot drives when your machine boots up. This is what Apple Store techs use. I find this to be a much simpler solution to resolve issues than having a 6-pin x 6-pin FW cable and another Mac to use Target Disc Mode.

I made a small partition on my USB2.0 Time Machine drive with Leopard on it in case I need to get into my Mac from a HDD or local OS X issue.

Last time I tried booting off an external drive I couldnt on 2.0. But it was vista (or long horn at the time) I'm assuming it has to be a smaller OS? Or maybe you just can now...I havent tried in years as there hasn't been much reason to. Also for balmer. Thats what I assumed it was but didn't know. Nothing special about 7200. You can certainly do better.

have you ever built Ballmer? Just curious as you seem to know alot of stuff about cords. Man, honestly if I have any other questions about cords in the near future I will completly ask you. Seeing how your obviously the authority on cords. You collect cords? I bet you plug stuff in better than anyone I know.

have you ever built Ballmer? Just curious as you seem to know alot of stuff about cords. Man, honestly if I have any other questions about cords in the near future I will completly ask you. Seeing how your obviously the authority on cords. You collect cords? I bet you plug stuff in better than anyone I know.

Problem: You didn't get a response for an entire hour so you decided to troll for an argument by patronizing a forum member.

Resolution: User CP => Edit Ignore List => Add mitz

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

At least with a Mac, your fully covered. Apple take responsibility for everything in that computer. So when something goes wrong you know exactly who your dealing with, Apple. Because of Apple carefully integrating it's software and making design specifications directly to it's external hardware suppliers, redesigned to work exclusively with Apple's other hardware and OS X, it goes wrong far less often. No other PC maker can integrate their parts with their OS like that.

OK, now we are talking.

There is a point, but not much different than other manufacturers. Working in IT, for example, I had perfectly decent experience with Lenovo and HP warranty/support issues.

Even my custom built box has 3 year warranty on pretty much everything - motherboard, CPU, graphics, HDD, PSU. Ram comes with lifetime warranty. And so on. and since I've got everything from the same shop, anything goes wrong - I'll take it back to the shop and leave it with their techies to sort it out.

Acer, on the other hand, has absolutely useless support - to that level that we gave up on selling Acer machines, even if we had really good pricing from them.

But it is not like Apple will jump to sort out every problem that appears, much as I recall. Didn't see them offering replacements for recent graphics related problems on Macbooks. Is that new firmware really helping..? \

Have you ever thought maybe I like the way apple hardware is designed and can last for several years before even thinking about upgrades? seriously, there is nothing these netbooks have that I would desire, they are running extremely low level machines, that lack the finish and aesthetics of apple hardware, sorry but the price of a normal macbook is worth paying over that of a $600 netbook. Besides apple hardware has such tight integration with its various products available, ie ipods, iphones, itunes software etc. The way I see things now, if you are happy with using windows on slower or faster hardware, that is your business.

Folks that are happy purchasing and using apple hardware/software will always see the value in sticking with their associated vendor. Do not get it twisted, I have used windoze in the past, but after having to reformat and reinstall windoze due to malware and viruses, it gets old really fast. My 3 year old macpro workstation is still kicking with 8Gigs of ram and is more than ready to tackle an upgrade to snow leopard when it debuts.

... and my good old office single core P4, more than 4 years old, is running Vista Business at least as well as it was running XP, with only a few dollars invested in additional RAM. Considering that, I'm sure it will run Windows 7 even better.

One of my home computers is P3 based Toshiba Satellite 1000 laptop, now more than 8 years old. In that time, RAM was upgraded from 128 to 512MB and OS was reinstalled once; I didn't have to, but I wanted to remove all the data and apps my wife was using on it, once she moved to new machine, and I decided it is easier to reimage it than to uninstall apps and delete her data - regarding her chaotic way to organize it across the HDD. It is still as reliable as it was, and performing as well - better, actually - than it was when brand new, due to much more RAM.

So... what is your point? Another myth that PCs don't last? The major reason to push for new hardware is if you want to play games, and want to play them as they were meant to be played - on high resolutions and full details. If you are using it for casual stuff - internet, emails, organizing music, doing assignments and other light work, you can drag same hardware for ages... contrary to opinion here that you must change your PC every 2 - 3 years. \

There is a point, but not much different than other manufacturers. Working in IT, for example, I had perfectly decent experience with Lenovo and HP warranty/support issues.

Even my custom built box has 3 year warranty on pretty much everything - motherboard, CPU, graphics, HDD, PSU. Ram comes with lifetime warranty. And so on. and since I've got everything from the same shop, anything goes wrong - I'll take it back to the shop and leave it with their techies to sort it out.

Acer, on the other hand, has absolutely useless support - to that level that we gave up on selling Acer machines, even if we had really good pricing from them.

But it is not like Apple will jump to sort out every problem that appears, much as I recall. Didn't see them offering replacements for recent graphics related problems on Macbooks. Is that new firmware really helping..? \

Just worry about M$.

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

That is in no way comparable to Migration Assistant:Windows Easy Transfer
Step One: "Install the small software application that was included with your cable..."

Good one, Microsoft.

Yes, you need to install a small program on your old PC if it is Windows 2000. Oh, what a shame - 10 years old OS don't support Vista's native Easy Transfer! Ah, the blasphemy!!!

Cable-schmable. If you bothered to read more, you'd see you can transfer over network, USB HDD, DVD... but out of all that article, you found 1 sentence that you liked, you pulled it out of content and used it exclusively. Bra-vo.

Again, nonsense. Vista Home Premium and Ultimate - the one flavour Mac people keep comparing OSX to - come with mentioned codecs, or will DL them automatically for free when Media Player encounters file it does not already understand. Additionally, every DVD burner comes with DVD player software. Additionally, free players like VLC will play DVDs and almost every other imaginable format.

Additionally, I can make my PC play BR movies with just a small extra investment. Can you..?

Quote:

"Some burning capabilities?" That's comforting...

It is so nice to see you comforted...

Quote:

Yeah, but that pesky "initial setup" gets you every time.

Every time I set new computer, yes. 5 minutes to install Comodo Security.

Man, what could I have achieved if I had all that time at my disposal...

Quote:

I assume he's talking about Time Machine. You don't need a special version of Mac OS X to get it. And by the way, Time Machine provides hardware independent restore--at no extra cost.

Vista Business, Home Premium and Ultimate are not special versions of Vista. In fact, they are all very common

Quote:

No, Macs are at least price-competitive with PCs. On the other hand, Apple does not cater to the bottom feeder market. Incidentally, there is no "iLife grade software" available for Windows.

Sure, Apple cater for "Legally Blond" market. But SJ said he'd like to have a bit bigger market share, and since there is only that much Legally Blondes around, Apple should reconsider their pricing policy. Or give up on having more than 7% of market share.

iLife grade software, as in simple, colourful home user software? Oh, I think we could scrap some...

Yes, you need to install a small program on your old PC if it is Windows 2000. Oh, what a shame - 10 years old OS don't support Vista's native Easy Transfer! Ah, the blasphemy!!!

Cable-schmable. If you bothered to read more, you'd see you can transfer over network, USB HDD, DVD... but out of all that article, you found 1 sentence that you liked, you pulled it out of content and used it exclusively. Bra-vo.

That Mac guy is relative of your, maybe?

Again, nonsense. Vista Home Premium and Ultimate - the one flavour Mac people keep comparing OSX to - come with mentioned codecs, or will DL them automatically for free when Media Player encounters file it does not already understand. Additionally, every DVD burner comes with DVD player software. Additionally, free players like VLC will play DVDs and almost every other imaginable format.

Additionally, I can make my PC play BR movies with just a small extra investment. Can you..?

It is so nice to see you comforted...

Every time I set new computer, yes. 5 minutes to install Comodo Security.

Man, what could I have achieved if I had all that time at my disposal...

Vista Business, Home Premium and Ultimate are not special versions of Vista. In fact, they are all very common

Sure, Apple cater for "Legally Blond" market. But SJ said he'd like to have a bit bigger market share, and since there is only that much Legally Blondes around, Apple should reconsider their pricing policy. Or give up on having more than 7% of market share.

iLife grade software, as in simple, colourful home user software? Oh, I think we could scrap some...

I, like most of the people here, think it's great you love all the ins and outs of what politely is called Windows and feel like you saved some money at the same time. But we don't want it. We know what we want and we have it. It all works, as Apple says "seamlessly" and it goes on working, without ever getting tiresome or error ridden.

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

I find it ironic that the three things he wants are not found in the HP he chose when compared to a Mac. However, it is a notebook so it's therefore portable, and has a battery so it does have battery life and it obviously powers on after several minutes of booting up so it does meet his criteria if not compared to other machines.

Seriously though, is MS just not hiring the right people or is it really hard to find a reason to buy a non-Mac notebook. For starters, instead of focusing on reasons to choose Windows they are focusing on Macs so much that it may do more for selling more Macs than other vendor's PCs. Then there is the major issue of "preaching to the choir" in these ads. In other words, the people that these ads relate to aren't teetering being Mac and non-Mac for their next PC purchase. It's simply a waste of an advertising budget.

I suppose this marketing is intended for someone like me. My four year old HP is notebook is finally falling apart, and my desktop runs ancient Xenon processors with legacy peripherals that fell from favor long ago. I didn't even want to spend the cash on a new computer, but once my HP started crashing to desktop while running Lightroom 1.4 and the desktop started showing a BSD on most boots-ups, I decided to buy a new computer.

I spent a lot of time researching, actually looking for an excuse not to buy the Macbook Pro. They're expensive, bottom line, so looking at and comparing base models did make me lean towards going with another HP. But once I started comparing specs like FSB speed, L2 cache size, RAM specification and speed, hard drive size, and GPU, the PC notebooks were just a couple hundred less than the MBP. And so I sat on the fence while waiting on my edu check from the VA.

The funny thing is that I saw the "slot machine" ad on the New York Times webpage, and it completely turned me off. How can Microsoft compare a base HP or Dell to a Mac with a faster FSB, larger L2 cache, faster RAM? The marketing is completely dishonest and assumes that computer buyers are idiots. And why not compare models with as near to identical specifications as possible when, in such a comparison, the PC would still come out a couple hundred cheaper than the Mac?

So basically, to bring this back to the point solipsism made, Microsoft's ad campaign sold me on a MacBook Pro. What it all came down to were these four points: 1) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot. 2) I'll be learning a new OS in a few months anyway when Microsoft abandons Vista and turns to Windows 7. 3) I'm not going to fret over $200-$300 price difference between a MBP and an equally spec'ed PC when I'm prepared to drop >$2k on a computer. 4) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot.

I look forward to enjoying my MBP when it gets here Friday. Hopefully this board will be a great resource for me in the years ahead.

[...]
So basically, to bring this back to the point solipsism made, Microsoft's ad campaign sold me on a MacBook Pro.
[...]

Welcome to AI. Obviously you aren't an idiot as you saw the genius of my post.

Seriously though, I think the commercial has a point, albeit lost and clouded, that the much cheaper machine is sufficient or good enough to satisfy the average person computing needs. Is there a simpler way they can portray that simple fact? Car companies push their economical cars all the time and fast food companies push their economical meals all the time without making me think they are trying to portray a sub-compact as a luxury automobile and cheeseburger as a steak.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Welcome to AI. Obviously you aren't an idiot as you saw the genius of my post.

Seriously though, I think the commercial has a point, albeit lost and clouded, that the much cheaper machine is sufficient or good enough to satisfy the average person computing needs. Is there a simpler way they can portray that simple fact? Car companies push their economical cars all the time and fast food companies push their economical meals all the time without making me think they are trying to portray a sub-compact as a luxury automobile and cheeseburger as a steak.

Thanks for the welcome.

Most people use computers for internet, email, and porn. Netbooks are so popular because those tiny things can accomplish those rudimentary tasks (although I wouldn't wnat to watch porn on such a small screen ) Apple obviously targets a different demographic. Just look at the pictures and the design of their website. Nearly every picture highlights video or photo editing.

In the other thread a lot has been made of Microsoft's dominant market share, and how this ad campaign does not make sense if they think that Apple is not a threat. My opinion is that Microsoft is afraid of the fact that Macs are so popular among young people, especially college students. MS is afraid afraid that these young people are going to start off with a positive Mac experience and become loyal to Apple for the rest of their lives. Just look at who the Windows ads feature: pre-teens and young adults. You can't tell me that MS is not afraid to their core of the prospect of loosing an entire generation of tech savvy kids who are coming of age in an interconnected digital media and social networking world. MS' own market research probably shows that they are loosing the media battle over this generation of young Americans, so they are deliberately trying to make the case that a cheeseburger is a steak, or that a sub-compact is a luxury automobile. They don't care that they are alienating people who know better, because they're probably aware they've already lost those folks.

Someone needs to explain to the author how memory/CPU FSB speeds work as it's pretty clear he doesn't understand them.

That 'cheap' 533MHz (effective) RAM on the HP runs at 266 MHz which happens to be the same speed that the CPU FSB runs at (it's 266*4=1066MHz effective quad-pumped).

If you didn't know you generally want the RAM speed to 1:1 to the CPU speed, but and you will won't get any better performance if the RAM is faster than the FSB speed as the CPU won't be able to take advantage of it.

So in other words, putting faster or more expensive RAM (even if it was DDR3), wouldn't make the slightest noticeable difference as you are already getting the best you can with that CPU.

I'm not sure why I read 13 pages of posts. Maybe it was simply a curious fascination with the repetitive arguments and opinions.

(snip)

But the Mac guys and gals are usually more moderate in their views.

That's because, unlike Lauren, we're all cool don't ya know! I too have read through all 13 pages (d'oh!) and have learned two things 1) Firewire is absolute junk 2) BMWs are unreliable! So, not a complete waste of time after all!

Believe nothing, no matter where you heard it, not even if I have said it, if it does not agree with your own reason and your own common sense.Buddha

Someone needs to explain to the author how memory/CPU FSB speeds work as it's pretty clear he doesn't understand them.

That 'cheap' 533MHz (effective) RAM on the HP runs at 266 MHz which happens to be the same speed that the CPU FSB runs at (it's 266*4=1066MHz effective quad-pumped).

If you didn't know you generally want the RAM speed to 1:1 to the CPU speed, but and you will won't get any better performance if the RAM is faster than the FSB speed as the CPU won't be able to take advantage of it.

So in other words, putting faster or more expensive RAM (even if it was DDR3), wouldn't make the slightest noticeable difference as you are already getting the best you can with that CPU.

DDR3 vs. DDR2"DDR3 also uses more internal banks - 8 instead of the 4 used by DDR2 - to further speed up the system. More internal banks allow advance prefetch to reduce access latency... As discussed earlier, one of the long term potentials of DDR3 is improved memory latency."

2. Software - Put simply, I'm more productive in Mac OS X than in Windows...I don't have to spend hours installing updates, removing trialware/bloatware and manufacturer "utilities" on a Mac. I'm up and running within minutes, not hours.

3. Support...My PowerBook G4 lost it's ability to display video properly about 2 months before the end of AppleCare...2 days later, I had a brand new Macbook Pro delivered to my house, free of charge.

4. Compatibility...The ability to run Windows on my Mac resolves those issues....

I, like most of the people here, think it's great you love all the ins and outs of what politely is called Windows and feel like you saved some money at the same time. But we don't want it. We know what we want and we have it. It all works, as Apple says "seamlessly" and it goes on working, without ever getting tiresome or error ridden.

Would you believe that I have no problem with that..? \

I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.

That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.

So here we are.

It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.

But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.

I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.

That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.

So here we are.

It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.

But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.

There's a wide range of technical knowledge on this forum and I suspect much of the comments reflect a pretty basic response, like myself, who's had two PC's running Windows XP and not felt happy. I did have lots of problems using windows XP, but in fairness my first PC was nearly 10 yrs old and the second about 3 yrs old. I was itching to get an Apple from my first few visits to the Apple store where I saw that iPhoto was incredibly simple and straight forward to use and that was my main need for a computer outside of e-mail and the internet. If I was someone who genuinely required higher specs I might have been tempted to go with a PC as Apple's gear does get expensive and I was so fed up with my PC waiting another 6 months or more till I could afford to spend more was just not tempting. As it's turned out, even with just the 1GB of ram the mini came with, I have no problems doing anything 'I' have needed to do.
Of course your needs are different. Those new 'sexy' laptops are just exactly that to a lot of people, especially in today's economic climate. Spending that kind of money on a laptop when it's uses will involve only some pretty basic tasks, however well it works or nice it is to use, will mean those looking for a laptop, who are 'financially challenged' will either choose the white MacBook or settle on a PC that's going to save them 30% or so in the short term. They in my opinion though wont have wasted a penny if they could afford the uni-body. It's lighter weight, less bulkiness, beautiful screen, multi-gesture trackpad, long lasting battery, better speaker (than the white MacBook) and strong construction are all worth paying for IMHO.
Apple may address this with a NetBook and I hope it does.

I really can't comment on the quality of the new uni-bodies internal hardware, other than to me, it seems well built and the simple fact that Apple run their own OS with their carefully chosen and redesigned hardware does make a difference to how well it runs and lasts. Until Dell etc write their own OS for their computers their not going to fully catch up with Apple.

If gamers want to buy a windows machine for less, that's up to their requirements and has a larger screen, go for it. But they shouldn't expect the same experience as someone using a Mac Pro in reliability, customer care or most of the PC's uses outside of gaming.

My goal at the moment is to save for a used 17" uni-body which I hope to be able to afford when the usb 3.0 comes out, as many current owners will, with any luck, want to upgrade to it and sell their current models?. I'm confident my mini will carry on working well until then.

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

Welcome to AI. Obviously you aren't an idiot as you saw the genius of my post.

Seriously though, I think the commercial has a point, albeit lost and clouded, that the much cheaper machine is sufficient or good enough to satisfy the average person computing needs. Is there a simpler way they can portray that simple fact? Car companies push their economical cars all the time and fast food companies push their economical meals all the time without making me think they are trying to portray a sub-compact as a luxury automobile and cheeseburger as a steak.

I find it funny that most that have bsod can be tweakedz and overcoockers. That said, when I used macs more often which is 99% of the time I remember saying to myself it really is the experience. Apple softaware worksnthw way you think it should. Case in point add an image to word doc go to move it or resize and poof the image is off the page. Try this in iWork and it does what you want it to. Works the way the brain works. On the other hand some software like nuendo $2000 for mac or pc works better on a pc. Less problems. Plus it's very FPU Dependent. Need more reverb or fx or virtual orchesatra it requires more CPU fpu power which depends on CPU speed. The thing I like about pcs are you can build a wirkststiin that dies a good job and in a year if you know what you're doing and buy the right motherboard, you can swap the CPU and have a faster computer. Worst case, you have to buy a new CPU and motherboard, much cheaper than a new mac. Personally now that msft has just win 7 in the wings and no need to support several os"s. They could have a hit. Hard to say. Right now it runs well with old hardware and that's very different from vista. Part of me thinks the whole campaign is to get ready for win 7. Still, hard to imagine they will get the experience down. But some will purchase a of due to this ad.

DDR3 vs. DDR2"DDR3 also uses more internal banks - 8 instead of the 4 used by DDR2 - to further speed up the system. More internal banks allow advance prefetch to reduce access latency... As discussed earlier, one of the long term potentials of DDR3 is improved memory latency."

I guess you missed that part of the article. Sheesh...

Nice dig, but if you bothered to compare results, you would have seen that real-life speed compares between DDR2 and DDR3 are from irrelevant to non-existent.

(I'm actually pretty sure you did check results, but decided to pull one paragraph out of content and use it to your advantage. Sad if you ask me)

True article is from 2007... but then again, that is the DDR3 speed Apple is using in their new computers. Have they decided to use DDR3-1600, maybe - maybe - you might have an argument more, but even that is questionable - from all I could find DDR3 in any flavour make some sense only on i7 processors, which Apple is not using for Macbooks and iMacs anyway. Even new Phenom II processors from AMD, though they are borrowing heavily from i7 design wise (but not performance wise), don't benefit from DDR3.

I suppose this marketing is intended for someone like me. My four year old HP is notebook is finally falling apart, and my desktop runs ancient Xenon processors with legacy peripherals that fell from favor long ago. I didn't even want to spend the cash on a new computer, but once my HP started crashing to desktop while running Lightroom 1.4 and the desktop started showing a BSD on most boots-ups, I decided to buy a new computer.

I spent a lot of time researching, actually looking for an excuse not to buy the Macbook Pro. They're expensive, bottom line, so looking at and comparing base models did make me lean towards going with another HP. But once I started comparing specs like FSB speed, L2 cache size, RAM specification and speed, hard drive size, and GPU, the PC notebooks were just a couple hundred less than the MBP. And so I sat on the fence while waiting on my edu check from the VA.

The funny thing is that I saw the "slot machine" ad on the New York Times webpage, and it completely turned me off. How can Microsoft compare a base HP or Dell to a Mac with a faster FSB, larger L2 cache, faster RAM? The marketing is completely dishonest and assumes that computer buyers are idiots. And why not compare models with as near to identical specifications as possible when, in such a comparison, the PC would still come out a couple hundred cheaper than the Mac?

So basically, to bring this back to the point solipsism made, Microsoft's ad campaign sold me on a MacBook Pro. What it all came down to were these four points: 1) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot. 2) I'll be learning a new OS in a few months anyway when Microsoft abandons Vista and turns to Windows 7. 3) I'm not going to fret over $200-$300 price difference between a MBP and an equally spec'ed PC when I'm prepared to drop >$2k on a computer. 4) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot.

I look forward to enjoying my MBP when it gets here Friday. Hopefully this board will be a great resource for me in the years ahead.

I think that MS ads are much less insulting than Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. I think that MS marketing team actually paid extra attention not to insult Mac in any way possible - thus every ad is referring to Macs in politically correct manner. Compare that to Apple's ads that were using questionable humour to deliver really insulting lies to consumers: PCs can't communicate with latest digital cameras. PCs can't print. PCs... Every Apple ad was about PC as much as it was about Mac. On the other side, Apple's exposure in new Windows ads is minimal. They ar ementioned, but not much more than that. And they are not being joked at. And we don't even hear that Mac can't play games natively.

I think that MS ads are much less insulting than Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. I think that MS marketing team actually paid extra attention not to insult Mac in any way possible - thus every ad is referring to Macs in politically correct manner. Compare that to Apple's ads that were using questionable humour to deliver really insulting lies to consumers: PCs can't communicate with latest digital cameras. PCs can't print. PCs... Every Apple ad was about PC as much as it was about Mac. On the other side, Apple's exposure in new Windows ads is minimal. They ar ementioned, but not much more than that. And they are not being joked at. And we don't even hear that Mac can't play games natively.

And you still think Microsoft ads are more insulting..?

Your way off here.
The Apple ads were fair and pointed out real differences. If you can't see the difference in the Appe ads, you probably should just stick to a PC because you'll probably never notice the difference there either.

The new 9400 chips in the white MacBook, 9400 and 9600 in the Pro's, means they're all good for games. So what if some aren't played natively. PC can't play any of the Mac only games. So given the Mac can play all the PC games and all the Mac games, that puts PC's at a disadvantage!

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

Nice dig, but if you bothered to compare results, you would have seen that real-life speed compares between DDR2 and DDR3 are from irrelevant to non-existent.

The article noted that at the time it was written (2007), DDR3 was just being introduced and chip set support was somewhat tentative. In fact, the author stated that he expected that DDR3 results would improve over time. He was right--there is now a big difference in performance between what he tested then (using the Bearlake chipset) and current chip sets (Eaglelake, Montevina/Cantiga, etc.) and module timings:

Here's the difference. Most Mac users dont have any interest in becoming Windows IT experts. And here's where the catch is about using Windows. To use Windows effectively, without worrying, you either have to BE a Windows expert, or you have to HIRE a Windows expert, regardless of your general technical skill. To use a Mac, you don't have to be an expert of any sort, and you don't have to ask anyone to help either. It just works, without any intricate knowledge of why or how, or what the registry does, or whether you need antivirus or whether you should avoid certain websites. It just works.

There is no "ignorance" involved here. Mac OS is easy to use for the layman. Windows is not. If you are saying you can run Windows without help from an IT expert, and without being a Windows expert, without supplemental anti-virus software, without the occasional SERIOUS problem, then you are simply a liar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikon133

Would you believe that I have no problem with that..? \

I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.

That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.

So here we are.

It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.

But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.

Hi there Apple Insider. I have a grad degree in computer science. I've worked for almost a decade in both hardware and software, from corporate networks to web design. I have studied computers from binary up, from writing machine code to studying user experience design. I also have an undergrad degree in design, so I can appreciate the valuable effect that aesthetics can have on a user experience. I want to say up front that I'm not going to be dismissive of Apple computers and devices. I think that Apple makes incredible products, both hardware and software.

However, I must admit that I would never buy an Apple computer. All but one out of the hundreds of computer professionals that I have befriended over my nearly 20 years of academic and professional experience would ever purchase an Apple computer (the one guy that owns a Mac designs Apple networks for a living, gets a significant discount, and also owns and regularly uses an XP/Linux machine at home).

When computer professionals (at least the ones I've known) are asked by their friends and relatives for advice on purchasing their own computers, they usually suggest an Apple computer as an option only to those with a low level of computer knowledge and necessity, and a very comfortable budget (i.e. older, upper-middle class people with very little previous computer experience), or to a person for whom design and a cohesive aesthetic are of disproportionately more importance (i.e. non-computer-reliant fine arts students, like fashion design, or higher income design-based marketing professionals).

To most others, for the moment at least, I suggest a Dell as the least horrible option. I strongly dislike Dell, I have absolutely no affiliation with them whatsoever. But they seem to have a nice balance between customizability and price. Not only is Dell offering computers at a discount with Ubuntu pre-installed in place of Vista, but you can buy any Dell with some flavor of Windows OS and get a refund from Dell for refusing to agree to the EULA when you first turn on the laptop (just call them and ask for the refund be persistent). They are required by the EULA terms to do this, as are any other 3rd party distributors (HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc.). This knocks around $200 off the price (or whatever the cost to Dell for the license from Microsoft). Dell offers at-home service for the life of the warranty through a 3rd party company, usually Qualicom. While there are of course some complaints about the service, the feedback is significantly more positive than the service experience at a local Apple store, especially the ones in New York City.

If you want my ivory tower prediction, open-source is going to completely devour the software market within the next 10ish years, and Apple is about as far from open source as you can get they pride themselves on it. If Moore's law holds roughly true (so far it has been dead-on for 40 years), the time intervals between releases of software will become shorter and shorter to utilize and adapt to the increasing acceleration of hardware advancements (and therefore the need to adapt to those advancements).

This brings me to the point of this post. You can thank my mac-owning girlfriend for the fact that I am even aware of this thread (she too was irritated by the ridiculous Microsoft ads). I've read through the posts here, and while most of the arguments surrounding mac vs. windows vs. linux have been trotted out, there is one criticism of Apple, and to a much lesser extent, Microsoft, that is, in my opinion, EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:

Apple's hardware and software are unnecessarily proprietary. This is known as vendor lock-in. These practices are harmful to the consumer, the company (in the long term), the software industry, and can hinder the spread of technological advancement throughout society. And especially in Apple's case, it's hypocritical.

OSX is UNIX, which was most recently developed by The Open Group in the 90s. Their goal was to create a standardized operating system independent of proprietary hardware. This was extremely valuable, because whenever software was designed for one architecture, it had to be redesigned, often and significant cost and effort, to run on another architecture (this is one reason why DirectX is so valuable to game designers). UNIX allowed developers to create software for one platform, but sell to a much larger market. UNIX was designed to OPEN UP THE SOFTWARE MARKET! It is extremely hypocritical for Apple to take an operating system that was developed for the purpose openness and compatibility and artificially restrict it to "approved" hardware and software. While it is true that OSX is a stable, reliable operating system free from many of the flaws of its competitors, OSX is little more than a flavor of Linux that excluding all but the most rudimentary functionality, repackaged and sold back to the consumer as if these artificially-imposed limitations were its most attractive feature.

What Apple has done is analogous to downloading Firefox, installing a theme and some popular extensions, making their own flavors and variations of the most useful websites on the internet (admittedly with improvements), and selling this specialized version of Firefox to you at a premium under a different name. THERE IS NOTHING NECESSARILY WRONG WITH THIS. This is great, if Apple stopped there. But what Apple does that makes absolutely no sense - they restrict you from downloading themes and extensions made by other people, they don't allow you to go to any of the unapproved websites on the internet, and the worst part - they close off what was once open source so that no one can learn from, improve-upon, modify, experiment, debug it. This drives away many of the brightest minds in software development, their time is better spent developing for a community that nurtures rather than discourages and exploits it. This stifles healthy competition, significantly restricts the universe of possibilities both functional and aesthetic, and results in products that cost more than their value BY DEFINITION.

And this is the worst part - the scariest part for me as a computer professional - Apple markets its product to consumers with the promise that it will be easy - they will take care of everything. You won't have to fix strange problems, compare different types of software and hardware, learn about how to keep your computer secure, etc. You can sit back, relax, and use your computer while they do all the annoying, nerdy stuff for you.

This is true, and its a great selling point. It's why I recommend Macs to those who have the smallest desire and/or ability to learn about and adapt to the challenges of using technology. However, and this is the point of this whole wall of text:

it is the ability to learn and adapt to new technology and the challenges it will bring that will be THE ABSOLUTELY MOST CRUCIAL SKILL to possess in our lifetimes.

If the pace of hardware development truly does continue to progress exponentially, and if software continues to keep up, you cannot afford to rely on a company like Apple to do the hard stuff for you. You are doing yourself a disservice if you view a cursory understanding of technology as a virtue, and the modest time and effort required to be prepared to confidently adapt to an uncertain future as an unnecessary inconvenience. Within barely a decade if not sooner, companies like Apple and Microsoft will not be able to keep up with the speed of the development cycle necessary to turn out a product that will be useful for long enough to justify the cycle. Perhaps something new will arise, but currently, only open-source communities will be able to handle this breakneck pace of development, simply because they dont release software in the traditional sense they offer an older, stable version and a work-in-progress. If you discover a new and you cannot wait for the developers to fix it, YOU can learn to fix it yourself, and your solution becomes part of the latest work-in-progress.

But most importantly, if Apple continues to attempt in vain to grab market share, rather than share the market, Apple users will be left in the dust while the majority of the technological world embraces the future of computing as a collaborative, open, living process, a future that will need what Apple does best creating an appealing and inspiring user experience, using design to drive hardware development, not the other way around. Unfortunately, the future has no room for what Apple also does well clinging to its failures as stubbornly as its successes.

Id like to see Apple customers should demand that Apple open things up while continuing to innovate. Allow developers and their consumers to take their products into the future. Apple does not have to sacrifice anything - consumers can decide to use only Apple-approved products and maintain the level of quality and the cohesive aesthetic they have come to expect. Or not.

That's got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on these boards.

I can hardly wait to tell the vast armies of Mac using programmers here in the Bay Area that they don't exist. You do know that being able to run Windows, command line Unix, and OS X on the same machine is kind of a selling point for coders?

And the idea that the average PC user is developing their 21st century tech chops by dealing with Windows, while poor, coddled Mac users fall ever further behind is priceless.

Did I say "bizarre"? I mean "awesome."

They spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the grand duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.

Gee, you're impressive. I bet you built lots of things from Heathkit back at the end of the last ice age too, huh? Still know Morse code? Can field strip that 1903 Springfiled blindfolded, too?

So, why waste your time (and bandwidth) trolling around a Mac news site being smug.

We CHOOSE to use Macs because we can't be bothered dicking around with a shitty OS like Windows and the crappy software that runs on it. OR for that matter dicking around with half-baked "solutions" like Linux. For some, aesthetics and things that work well are important.

It doesn't mean that many of us can't or couldn't fuck with Windows or Ubuntu and make it work. We simply don't want to and can't be bothered.

That's got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on these boards.

Where in the world could this guy have a computer science degree from? He is either lying or needs to get his money back.

In ten years Open Source will still be where it i today. Either it getting folded into a commercial product, like Apple's vast use of and funding of open source that makes up the OS X and its software. Or it will have to ad supported to make any money. Either way, it will be a small market that the average person will never support because it will never be as easy to use to show people it is the best option, as well advertised to let the public know its there nor as well supported to offer the public peace of mind if something does go wrong.

His premise that Macs are for people without computer skill is so far from the truth. It's the computer professionals that are tied to fiddling with Windows and tweaking Linux all day at that work that just want to come home to a computer that has the power of Unix and is easy to use that are buying Macs in droves since the switch to OS X.

Signed,
Competent user with computer science degrees and certifications out his ass.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

In ten years Open Source will still be where it i today. ... it will be a small market that the average person will never support because it will never be as easy to use to show people it is the best option, as well advertised to let the public know its there nor as well supported to offer the public peace of mind if something does go wrong.

Absolutely. Users first need to to know what's out there... advertising, reviews, etc.
AND they need to know the software is reliable and they can get support when they need it.

It's a bit like the shareware ecosystem. I've stumbled across some great applications and utilities and unless they're reviewed or recommended regularly, most people will never have heard of them. Not everyone will take the time to hunt for useful tools, they'll take their pick from mainstream developers.

It's a double-edged sword. There are amazing pieces of shareware that have been around for years... ie: Default Folder X, Graphic Converter, 1Password... that you KNOW will be around. Then there are things from small developers that are great, but slowly lose support and the developer eventually disappears. Then you're stuck. Recent examples: Concierge, WeatherPop.